Friday, September 23, 2016

Site C Licence of Occupation

On Sunday Sept. 25, the deadline for public input into BC Hydro's request to log crown land slated for Provincial Park status above the Site C dam will close. So why are you only just now hearing about this on a blog? Good question.According to the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative in an article in woodbusiness.ca, which you probably aren't in the habit of reading on a daily basis :

"On Sept. 1, BC Hydro placed a notice of intent to log the valley, including parts of the Peace-Boudreau, an Old Growth Management Area, at the back of local newspapers. There was no mention of the Site C dam in the advertisement, which gave a deadline for comments of Sept. 25."

Which is interesting because after recently issuing permits via Transport Canada and Fisheries and Oceans to allow the Site C dam to proceed even as the West Moberly and Prophet River First Nation were challenging the previous government's approval of it in the courts, the Trudeau government told the House of Commons on Tuesday that "it is now up to B.C. Hydro to conduct any further public consultations".

Not sure an ad at the back of local papers that doesn't even name Site C counts as "public consultations" but here's your window of opportunity to tell the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations what you think about :

1) the lack of public consultation in which they have been complicit, and

I spent much of today submitting this BC Hydro Licence of Occupation info, minus any snarky editorializing, to news media, environmental watchdogs, Site C opponents, and MPs. I haven't heard peep back from any of them so far despite the considerable help of facebookies and twitterati furiously aiming it at expected interested parties. Do people living in the Peace even know about it? I don't know. There's a Site C Project website and a twitter feed and I don't see this mentioned on either one.As Christy Clark rushes to evict ranchers and landowners by Christmas to get the 83-kilometre flood zone "past the point of no return" before the next BC election, in the largest removal of land from the Agricultural Land Reserve in its history, it probably got lost amongst everything else Site C this month :APTN : Justice Minister Jody Wilson Raybould blames previous government for SiteC

Harry Swain, former chair of Joint Review Panel on Site C : "I think we're making a very big mistake."And finally No Strings Attached for the on-the-ground Site C nitty gritty you won't read anywhere else. Don't forget to tell the BC government and BC Hydro what you think about this latest round of "public consultation" and logging land above mudslides before the deadline this coming Sunday.h/t Mike for the link to the application.